perverse in the most simple, uninteresting sense. self as a box containing different things that have merely a spatial and temporal point in common.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Canadian Hole
As she and her friends began to leave, she stood there, a few feet away from me, waiting for them to pass by and looked at me plaintively, finally saying, bye, which I reciprocated. These being the only words spoken.
Oh the desire of the eyes. She was tall and lithe and had long black hair, lovely eyes and a smile that responded to mine once or perhaps more. And I do not know what would have come of it, had I invited her to join my friend and I for a drink. He's married and his wife is back visiting her mother country, so he invited me here for a few days of boy time, I guess you would call it.
I tell him all about this year. AT and then the women in the bathroom at the bar and then LP and then SS. I tell him about this blog and how I've been waiting for some kind of moral redress and not receiving it. And so he says, following my request that someone tell me I'm a fucking asshole, that I'm a fucking asshole. Which stigmatizes me for a while until later I ask him if he really so thinks. But he doesn't. THe morality of infidelity for him is a purely practical concern. A health concern. And rightly so.
He tells me that if he passed something to his wife he would really consider suicide. And I sympathize with this, although suicide for me has many more meanings. But that threat of not-knowing has worked its magic on me at times. And I've been lucky.
Would I have been able to take this dark-haired beauty into the bathroom (where all great things happen)? And what would this meaningless kiss have meant. Would I have enjoyed it for the pleasure of the kiss, knowing that I was bound to leave this country in just a few days? You see here friends, I'm nothing like you. Women are for me a continual potentiality of love, in addition to the pure pleasure of bodies.
Hole. The term a Greek restaurant owner used, who my friend worked for, back when we went to graduate school together. A woman would come in and he'd say, J___, look at that hole. I thought that was so funny when he reminded me.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Never Enough
So again I return to this thought about the ethics of revisiting this erotic past of betrayal, and if this revisiting is itself betrayal.
For me, habit is very important. Habit is the basis of character. I follow Aristotle in this regard. And so the habits that we repeat shape us. For these reasons, I am both sympathetic to the claims of Chelsea girl, in her recent post, and to the writer that she critiques. Pornography, like all forms of cultural product, does, in the forms that it repeats, create habits of thinking and acting. In other forums I have defended these claims to potentially absurd consequences (that reading crap like The DaVinci Code should be prohibited for certain age groups). The idea is, garbage in, garbage out.
My critique of that text comes, not from having read it (like I could waste four hours reading that when I could be reading Michel Tournier or the like), a mere aesthetic judgment, not a judgment about its content (let's just pretend like I can maintain that separation between form and content . . .). But with pornography, the matter is more complicated. Pornography has always struck me as so facile in its end. That is, why, although I am trying to implicate myself among this community of individuals (largely among a bunch of female writers (such as the above) I feel comfortable with and not their male counterparts, zum Beispiel, this fellow), I know that I cannot enjoy posts describing sexual acts as others, those who comment on their posts, do.
I mean, these posts interest me, don't get me wrong, but they don't really arouse me. I've been image habituated. I have to end up visiting Redtube to get off.
But I do get aroused by revisiting my past. At least some of the time. And I feel exhilarated in exhibiting these incidents, which by the standards of this community I seem to enjoy would be quite "vanilla." But for the same reason that I worry about the way that pornography shapes the way that I view sexual interactions, I worry about the way this exhibitionism and the betrayal in particular that it emphasizes shapes my own actions.
My history with betrayal is quite old. But the closer I come to so-called maturity (at my age, it has been a long time coming) the more I wonder why I can't be happy with less and what conflicts I am precipitating by continuing these practices. Shouldn't all this be tapering off a little?
Or have I fetishized infidelity so much so, that I cannot, like Séverine in "Belle de Jour," enjoy a relationship without being unfaithful and its concomitant guilt?
Maybe I've been lying to myself and I simply need to admit to polyamoury. Yet I feel quite convinced that, neither I nor another could sustain that.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Enough of Guilt?
Yet these instances are guilt of the I-got-caught variety. Not my sort.
So let me explore the I-got-caught variety, for some contrast and consideration. I call this the "cleaning out the apartment story" (of MC (#6) and KHG (#11)).
My heart was rekindled with love for humanity after a summer of intrigue (2001). More exactly, a summer of "potency." I had been in Italy for a boot camp of sorts, involving Danes, other Americans, "body," "earth" and ... Robert Smithson ("art"). A philosophy event. I'd never heard of Robert Smithson before or earth art, for that matter. But the concept of this work thrills me. Particularly, the temporality of the earth. There I met Rasmus. And would that I were in love with Rasmus. About a week or so in we started asking each other "are you feeling potent today?" and the other would answer, "oh, I am feeling incredibly potent today." We needed a secret universe where we could escape the intuition of the winter ahead. And for that magical lapse in time, we'd found it.
After the boot camp was over, he asked me if I'd care to come to Tübingen with him, and then afterwards back to Copenhagen. Naturally. In Tübingen, we did a lot of couleur-besuchen and there I met Tina, who only kissed me for a few minutes in a room apart from the one where her Chilean soccer player boyfriend was. Then in Copenhagen he introduced me to Carolina (#10), who was his friend who he'd also slept with. She was a lovely loaded girl who was coasting through life in a beautiful apartment. When I got to Paris for the few days before my flight back to the states, I sat in that dreadful room in the southern part of Paris writing her letters.
KHG was one of the new members of my program. A beautiful girl from butterchurning country. Her skin is a glowing fairness. She had blondish hair. She had scars on the back of her upper arms from the farm. We fell in love the way people are supposed to fall in love. She had a boyfriend when she arrived. Quickly dispatched that sorry fellow. We kissed on a skateboard ramp, admiring its graffiti. That was around the beginning of October.
But I was leaving in January to spend several months in Paris. I remember just a few nights before I left, we were having sex and in the middle she burst into tears. It was the most romantic thing I think I've ever experienced.
I was cleaning out that apartment where I'd lived for nearly two and a half years. There, I'd been with LCB and LR and MC and X(J)M and ... the funny business with OA and whoever else. MC stops by. On her way back to central New York, where'd she'd been teaching at the time. These were infamous visits. Essentially booty calls. But nothing since October, because I'd been with KHG and my heart and cock were so incredibly single-minded. With KHG, the world has been eclipsed.
That day I was cleaning up from a party I'd had the night before. We all got so drunk and even Dylan, who'd be dead only five years later, was there (I wonder if he ever knew his end was so near?). I restrained myself to mainly words with MC. But somehow in the bedroom, which was even barren of a bed, she had laid down on the floor and taken off her clothes and was touching herself. And I was standing above her, had pulled it out and was stroking it gazing at her body.
This was a repetition of a thousand other times.
I think not too infrequently about the time that I had gotten her pregnant. Not that I had known when it was. But there was once that I recall very vividly. It is late at night and I'd probably spent most of the evening drinking at the bar with her and a couple of friends (our nickname for her was "set theory," as in, are you going to learn some set theory this weekend, when I was going to visit her). She had mounted me and my cock was so hard and fully penetrating her and it seemed like that tiny most sensitive point at the head of my cock was pressed almost into, as if it were possible, her cervix. And I think that I saw fireworks as I came inside of her. That was a year before that afternoon when MC laid down on the floor and rubbed herself.
I stood above her, and would not even let her lick the cum off my cock after I came. And it was an act inspired by post-drunkenness and my own inability to process my confused feelings. That I was leaving KHG, after I'd just met her and we'd fallen so desperately in love. And I needed some diversion from the sharp pain of that confusion.
Months later, MC had shared a room at the Pacific conference with AT. And MC told AT, KHG's friend, about having sex with me and how it had repeatedly happend and about how I had always come back to MC after all of the little interludes, including LCB, XJM, LR, etc. MC and I would meet at motels between here and central New York, just for a night of sex. We would have phone sex, sometimes multiple times during one week. In fact, even years later, after KHG and I'd broken up, I slept with MC yet again.
And AT told KHG. I was in Tübingen, ironically, that weekend in the spring of 2002, when AT told KHG and she was ... distressed. Upset.
I lied to her and told her nothing had happened and that MC was making up the entire episode. And I stuck to my story. Luckily, no Starr inquiry was following the evidence. There was no cumstained dress. And KHG, either believed me or decided that she would pretend that she believed me. I prefer the latter explanation, so as not to insult her intelligence.
I felt guilty, but perhaps more than that upset that I would lose this relationship which had meant so much to me, to this silly thirst for pussy that'd overtaken me as I struggled, like a child, with feelings that adults (whoever they are) are supposed to be able to process.
KHG and I lasted about a year after this.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Sugasm #109
The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #109? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form. Participants, repost the link list within a week and you’re all set.
This Week’s Picks
From virgin cocksucker to blowjob queen
” I love to play and tease with my hand and tongue, lightly licking, sometimes using my panties or another soft fabric to run across the shaft.”
Interlopers
“Oh yes, I’ve seen it all before, I know what you’re here for.”
Old Friends
“His cultured voice warm, approving, promising; it makes me wet every time, an uncontrollable Pavlovian response.”
Mr. Sugasm Himself
The Count
Editor’s Choice
Hot and Cold
See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.
Friday, December 7, 2007
"I'll fuck anything that moves!"
So I followed her to the bathroom, where all good things happen. I stood outside that innocuous door, my soul aquiver such as that of the bow string of a famous violinist. When she opened the door, the fantasies melted. I took her back inside of that small room. We kissed and my hands pulled the small of her back closer to me. She smelled like something fecund. But that was all fantasies. She walked past me, pretending not to notice. How long can these games continue?
Her boyfriend, I know, has been unfaithful. For he has fucked AT (#19) also. She told me about it. But AT's boyfriend, a much closer friend than I, does not know. I wonder if fucking AT was like it was for me. The noises she made. It was glorious, coming in that little latex sack. And I think, why should Minnesota girl suffer not having my kisses, because she thinks that her boyfriend is faithful? I'm not that kind of guy. God, I'm like that fucker that takes Craig Kilbourne for real, when he says that guys don't tell on one another ("Old School"). That's not it.
I'm drunk.
But RBU called me tonight, I found, in the minutes passing as I dropped off my laptop before going to a party where my intense boredom would fester like a wound. I'd talk with AT and almost disclose my pathetic state. Instead, I changed the subject. Her breasts and that t-shirt: "wine me, dine me and etwas the river rhine me." And I had.
RBU, in the bedroom of some other guy, who only hours before I had, had returned her call and secured a night in which her pussy would be his. She was busy. We spoke for only a few seconds.
From 42nd street, my feet fell in paths not complementary. All of those blocks, abetted by the bus to 13th street, where I stopped to see the roommate of AT's boyfriend. I'd accosted her only weeks ago on the roof of a house near the art museum. She was not there. And I walked those lonely blocks by myself. I stopped and pulled it out to relieve myself. On the street. The pleasure of one's own touch.
I have not ridden in the back of a muscle car with a canister of oxygen, singing the praises of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I think not so highly of Dennis Hopper, despite the fact that he starred in "Rebel Without A Cause." Other, better Nicholas Ray films, I can think of.
But you are closer.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
I Speak Roughly, Part 2: RBU
RBU is not much taller than LR. Perhaps 5'3". She had long black hair then. Her visage is not pale, but fair, turning to slightly olive in the summer. Her breasts were incredible. I'd fantasized about them since I was a small child, sneaking looks at the lingerie section of the Sears catalog. Not only because they were large, but because she wore bras that accentuated her cleavage, and as you know we men have wholly fetishized this. And she played off it. But the rest of her frame is nicely proportioned. No man with sense wouldn't want to fuck her. Or woman. A lovely ass. In fact, body-wise, she was almost the twin of the luscious Tara Tainton. But she had this smile that said she was going to suck your cock until you turned her around and fucked her the rest of the night.
With her, to quote a bedroom poet of my alma mater, my dick was true. Really, I never had even the slightest hesitation about sex with her. And she felt similarly. She used to lay on the love seat (ha) with me, her pussy exposed, until I would take the bait and fuck her. Or lick it until she wanted more. One time I tried to teach her how to play chess. I said I was going to lick her pussy between moves, so as get her to move more quickly. But I did this while she was choosing her moves, thus giving her no inclination to move. It didn't make any sense, but I suppose I was trying to rationalize wanting to eat her out while we were playing a game. And her pussy ... was delicious. I suppose that is a trite thing to say. And what does it mean really, except that I wanted to lick it like a lollypop. Which is not to say that it tasted sweet, but also not that it tasted spicy--something kind of in between. I put my hands on her hips and pulled her pussy against my face, my tongue licking up and down across her clit, occasionally dipping between those lips. What was I trying to find? Her breasts heaving and eyes closed.
We never used condoms. It started off, because my fault for not having brought any, after a first date when we'd kissed and gotten heavy, on the second date (if going to her apartment can be called that) where things progressed. But she had my cock in hand and wanted it to be inside of her. And so we fucked and I came in her, not pulling out even though this had been my strategy on other occasions. The risk was minimal, granted, but I had gotten another woman pregnant although she had been on birth control (the infamous MC, #6). In a sense, we were both saying, we can affirm these consequences. We want chance to intervene.
At least that's the way it was at first. After several months, after the intense arguments had begun and the over-the-phone-and-immediately-annulled break-ups became consistent, I started encouraging her, selfishly I suppose, to go to the bathroom afterwards and empty her vessel. Because I still wanted the pleasure and thrill of bareback, but I was no longer capable of affirming the consequences.
Sex was our language. Which is not to draw an analogy with my experiences with LR, who had no language and used sex (with me) as a poor substitute. I mean, RBU and I had wonderful conversations about interesting things. And emotionally she understood everything--the sexual abuse I'd experienced as a child, the mental collapse, the unbearable stress of my occupation, the family tension. In college she had dropped out one semester ... things had just fallen apart for her. And it took her several years thereafter to finally finish her degree. One of her brothers had sexually abused another (my abuser was a babysitter). And her mother, who she loved and loves, perhaps more than life itself, died of cancer. She had gone through hell and essentially, I'm not sure she is coming back. Which is to say, she lives in the "sweet hereafter" now. The limbo of not-knowing.
Sex was the place both of us felt certain of ourselves, where everything else was discarded just like our clothes. We were probably always most comfortable naked with each other, because it was there--in that space--we had no fear or stress and everything else disappeared. Both of us seek the same from sex. For us both, it has always been a very powerful palliative--and the one we desire most.
She provokes a serious confusion in my soul, erecting my cock and lowering my conscience (and yes, my cock is part of my soul).
Sugasm #107
Sugasm #107
The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #108? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form. Participants, repost the link list within a week and you’re all set.
This Week’s Picks
Half-Nekkid Blow Job
” We could hear people walking past and talking so they’d be able to hear us as well.”
Masturbation on a Memory
“I let the first time I had sex with your flash back though my mind.”
Reality Check: Handling Long Calls
“While I get my share of quick cummer calls I have several clients that like to talk for hours.”
Mr. Sugasm Himself
Christian Friis
Editor’s Choice
A Non-Monogamy Lexicon
See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Sugasm #106
Sugasm #106
The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #107? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form. Participants, repost the link list within a week and you’re all set.
This Week’s Picks
5 Advanced Deep Throat Techniques
“Suck your man’s penis into your throat, and, while it is deep in, start to hum.”
MILF = Men I’d Like to Fuck
“He knows my body p e r f e c t l y and knows exactly how to make me squirm with pleasure and always knows the right thing to say.”
Reconciling Desire & Reality (part 2)
“The excitement of sharing her, the excitement of my arousal THEORETICALLY should mean a heightening of our own sex life.”
Mr. Sugasm Himself
Our fearless leader tells me he’s crazy busy so I’m presenting one from the vaults.
The Six Types of Porn Movie (and How To Get Into Them)
Editor’s Choice
Primed
See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
I Speak Roughly, or On the Notches on my Bedpost
Yet, this is all because I'm anticipating an audience. Trying to drum one up (the usual signs).
But this is odd considering only the other day I told RBU that I could not divulge the address of my blog. Yet the real reason, that here I'd disclosed how I'd fucked her friend LP. And she is just becoming friends with LP again, so it'd be best for them to get along again. And RBU needs the friends. She's gliding right now, safely, across the difficulties of life, supported by numerous, I imagine, sexual encounters and the numerous attentions of men less savory than myself. But those difficulties will reapproach, when these distractions pass.
You can see though, that my real pleasure is in the recounting of betrayal. That I fucked not only one of her friends (LP, #13), but both of them (also LR, #9). And that this desired woman (LP, #13) was the object of the affections of two of my close male friends. To maximize the pleasure, let me say more about it.
First, LR (#9). She has a name like a moviestar. LR was/is stupid. Lovely, very friendly, sympathetic, understanding. But dumb as a rock. Hadn't read a book to save her life. In fact, she came to the hospital the day I was discharged. I paid her back my fucking both of her friends. But LR loved to fuck. The first night I brought her home, she sat on my face and took my cock in her mouth and sucked until she was ready to climb aboard. And it really was climbing because again she's a diminutive (both in stature and in voice ... as well as in intelligence) 5' Korean-Puerto Rican girl. And I'm part of the older generation, which is to say, tall. And we fucked our drunkiness away.
And our relationship, which really lasted only a month or so until I went to Italy for the summer, was just about the sex. What could I possibly have to say to her? Believe me, I tried. But it was just best with a lot of sex. And despite her small body, we had wonderful sex. That was the spring, early summer of 2001.
When I got back in the fall, after having met women in Tübingen and then Cøpenhagen (Carolina, the large-chested shrill screamer, #10), things resumed with LR, but only until I met KHG, and I dropped LR like a bad habit. In fact, started making out with KHG (#11) at a party where LR was (although I can say I didn't arrive with her--although I did get a ride home with her).
Two years later, after KHG kicked me to the curb right as I was taking on the largest wave of a serious, vital depression, I finally got over the sick desire to direct all of my cum to KHG by fucking LR. Seriously, I wouldn't allow myself to fantasize about anyone other than KHG while masturbating. So LR comes along and we have sex. Which was sweet medicine for my wounded soul (albeit too late). That was the fall of 2003. And shortly thereafter, I get thrown in the psychiatric inpatient ward. But not before meeting RBU, one night while out with LR. And as I've said in other posts, she impressed me as a woman I wanted to be with. And in a few weeks after getting out of the hospital, I was (and continue to be immodestly proud of it as well).
As for LR. She won't talk to me anymore, although we see each other at LP(#13)'s parties. Something happened where apparently I said something, which I cannot recall. I swore that I did not say it. Something about love and whatnot.
The numbers are supposed to be funny, you know.
Actually, I feel somewhat bad, because LR was there at such a vital point in my life, namely, when I got out to the hospital, that our friendship has come to nothing. Yet, it was really based on nothing. And despite how much I tried to overlook her cognitive shortcomings, I simply needed things that she would never be able to provide me--namely, as a friend. We could never really talk. And there was a time when that was fine. But ...
Friday, November 23, 2007
the list of notches on my bedpost
2. ANH (1993): she was 3 years older than me. a graduating senior. I was a sophomore. a poet. after a long drunken night with her, I woke up and said that her body was like a river.
3. K?A (1994-1999): she was a Deadhead. we smoked cigarettes after it. four fucking years of torture.
4. L?M (1996-1997): we slept together for at least a year during my relationship with KA. we were both graduate students. we'd meet in our offices at school and ...
5. DB (1999): Romanian. had won beauty contests in LA after her mother and she'd emigrated there. talked about skipping classes in highschool to go smoke weed and read Horace. we had sex for hours. something of an implicit between myself and the neighbor across the hall--whose woman was louder.
6. MC (1999-2003): our relationship lasted only a month but the sex stretched for years. we first met at a conference. when i met her i knew it wouldn't work. but alcohol got the best of me. got her pregnant. she had an abortion, but did not tell me until 2000.
7. LCB (2000): anthropologist. ex-girlfriend of my best friend. he'd introduced us on the topic of deterritorialization, bodies without organs, and the like. would never use a condom, although she'd recentlly gotten pregnant and then had an abortion. again, perhaps largely my inspiration. had to take her bed apart the week I visited her. too much noise. put the mattress on the floor. a total fucking basketcase, although incredibly functional, which I could say at that point, but no longer.
8. X(J)M (2000): mother of two at the age of 25. two wonderful boys, which I met on several occasions. she gave incredibly blowjobs and had no hangup about the location. once behind a movie theater.
9. LR (2000-2003): once fucked her on the same day as MC. MC came by in the afternoon. then that night LN, who was this tiny (5') Puerto Rican-Korean girl, hung out with me that night. I wondered, while she was sucking my cock, if she could smell the latex from teh condom used earlier with MC (i learned that lesson). no condom with LR, the mother of one beautiful daughter, she'd had at the age of 18.
10. Carolina (2000): she was Danish. although we kept in touch by email and letters, it was really a one night thing. she screamed so loud.
11. KHG (2000-2003): the love of my life. six years my junior. I'd show up at her apt., we'd close the door and start kissing, right there at the door and would walk no farther before we were naked on the floor and I was making her ejaculate noises which I can only imagine neighbors across the hall and downstairs must have heard.
12. RBU (2003-2005): the object of my obsessions. the best fuck, by far. i insisted on coming in her pussy. no condoms. not even in her mouth. it was the fantasy. pregnancy, forced marriage, a Volvo, etc. Summa cum Laude from Penn
13. LP (2005-2007): close friends with RBU and LR. I had my eye on fucking all three of them. but LP was the one I'd wanted first. but she was spending time with a close friend, and then another close friend dated her. our affairs are a secret to everyone except the two of us.
14. LM (2005): only once, really. it just wouldn't fit inside of her incredibly tight pussy. I know this is supposedly some fetishized state, but it just wouldn't work. and she was my JF of graduate school--JF I'd fallen in love with in my sophomore year of college--right before ANH--but I just couldnt' bring myself to have sex with her. both Michigan girls. in fact, LM reminded me so much of JF.
15. A? (2005-2006): ten years younger than me. could have been one of my students. our relationship lasted a week, I think. she has the most amazing wonderful breasts. of course, she was 22 then.
16. KVDV (2006): five years older than me. a Yalie, for which I fetishized her. and her sumptous ass. but as fucked up as me. and two fucked ups don't a normal person make. I was not allowed to touch her when we were trying to sleep, so fragile was her somnolent state. a mother insane. Connecticutt girl, wooed by rich boys who'd introduce her to Allen Ginsburg and the like (Mick Jagger's first wife, I think?). but a very smart girl. and this bedevils me more than anything.
17. NT (2006): had herpes. lovely girl. she gave the most incredible blowjobs. but despite the intense attraction to her, clearly a major practical problem.
18. YMB (2007): my girlfriend. a Michigan girl, which, has a certain resonance for me. but I am calm with her in ways I haven't felt for years (been too attracted to the girls that would argue with me). and Y will, but it's like, she states her position and then, it's over.
19. A?T (2007): one of two different betrayals this year. the other with LP. for how long have I known AT? she once cornered me in a bathroom, years back. and now I'd finally fucked her. just once really, and I consoled myself that time that things were at their worst with me and YMB. as usual, the result of my own fucked up state.
16 years of sex
of course, there were a lot of near misses:
OA (2000): who I wouldn't fuck because I knew she'd fall for me and I would never feel that way about her.
EI (2005): a close friend. we started spending some time together. but i couldn't fuck her for the same reasons ... and the opportunity only came up once ... a strange smell.
??? (2005): she was naked on my bed, on our first date, ready for me to fuck her. and my pipes refused to work.
B??: (2005): the roommate of LM. I can happily say that I broke the two of them apart. B had a crush on me as soon as she met me, but I just had no interest in her, because she was so damned ugly and stupid. not really stupid, but ignorant, I suppose. one night drunk. again, the pipes weren't functioning. thankfully.
W?? (2007): in the bathroom at a local restaurant. technically a betrayal--same week with AT and LP. but no sex. I met her that night, where I'd met a student of a colleague. he knew this girl and then we started talking dirty and well ...
Monday, November 19, 2007
on the desire to expose oneself in words
"The sordid details of his orgies stank under his very nostrils: the sootcoated packet of pictures which he had hidden in the flue of the fireplace and in the presence of whose shameless or bashful wantonness he lay for hours sinning in thought and deed: his monstrous dreams, peopled by apelike creatures and by harlots with gleaming jewel eyes: the foul long letters he had written in the joy of guilt confession and carried secretly for days and days only to throw them under cover of night among the grass in the corner of a field or beneath some hingeless door or in some niche in the hedges where a girl might come upon them as she walked by and read them secretly."
James Joyce, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (III:488-499)
Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Present State of Things: Fidelity and Self-Congratulation
Yet most of these blogs are aimed specifically towards erotica, I suppose you would call it. And this doesn't quite suit my purpose. Or at least, the purpose I can admit to myself. I could tell you about sleeping with L_____ a few months ago. But somehow that description is so artless and without meaning. A description of bodies and their interactions. That is not precisely what I want. For me there is something wonderful about sex which should not be rendered into discourse (yes, teaching Foucault as of late, leider). And the things which turn me on are ideas, frequently. Or at least, I don't want to write if that writing has only the purpose of detailing exploits. There has to be some reflection.
But so I have simply admitted to myself that I will have to spend some time before I am worthy of an audience. And maybe I'll start commenting here and there so as to develop one.
____________________
My ego congratulates itself for fidelity. This past weekend my girlfriend was here and so we spent time together and it was lovely, as it always is. But totally without sex. None whatsoever. And I hadn't seen her for at least two weeks. I think. And in between visits my friend S____, who is the ex-girlfriend and ex-fiancée of my closest friend K______, came into town. The last time I saw her was November 2005, when I traveled to southern California to see her and several other friends on the West Coast. At it happened, we ended up spending a delightful night in a tent together. Planning the camping trip that was sexless until we got into that tent ... and then it happened. Not that we slept together. All but, so to speak.
So last weekend, when S was here, I fell into old habits. We started making out in a bar. A mutual friend of ours tagged along, and so we tried to keep it somewhat subtly hidden from her, as my fingers crossed up her legs underneath the table, and her hand moved into my crotch. But the mutual friend was by no means fooled, although she mentioned nothing until the next day.
But so here, with only a week passed, my natural tendency for repression pontificates on the beginning of a new era in which the transgressive spirit has been quenched. Extinguished. And yet, I realize, perhaps things are not so ... rosy.
Monday, November 5, 2007
The Conflicted Desires Motivating Me
Sometimes, when in the throes of desire, this conscience is silenced. Then I can allow language free reign to speak of R's body and how it reflects me and my desires. Even as these words pass onto the screen, a certain rush betrays me. I want to talk about the sex I had with her, how I videotaped it (with her consent) and the images, after the relationship was over, that bedeviled me. And still do.
Yet, when emotional exhaustion strikes, the conscience reassumes dominance, and just as Freud and Nietzsche said it would, it terrorizes me. This morning I could barely get out of bed. I huffed over and over with anxiety and self-loathing, wondering how I could present myself confidently before my students, when the only image of myself was torture to look upon.
I credit myself with not being attracted, for the most part, to my students--young college girls. That seems like some kind of moral achievement. And in fact, I am striving to be moral. Why friends, I've even told R that I cannot speak with her for sometime for the sake of my sanity. At least, until this stressful period is over and my heart is less liable to its whims towards the desire that seduces it.
Yet, a lack of desire is not really any moral triumph. So long as morality remains the struggle of judgment with desire. But perhaps I'm not willing to admit that altogether. My philosophical formation struggles against it at every turn. But I was born and remain a Christian, if only in the shape of my soul and its forms of neurosis.
But let me say something about the desires which lead me here. Let me try to give an account of their first feast: the discovery of erotic images in a book in the closet of my father's bedroom. This book hidden away. I found it, took it to a place where I could be alone, and pleasured myself before these images. The pleasure of this moment had almost less to do with the scopophilic desire being sated, than with the happiness in my transgression. Because I hated my father then. That I could take this object and vandalize it, without it being known--that I could abuse its contents (not literally of course, because I had to replace it where I'd found it) and then return to my hohum existence. This excited me: I had my first transgression.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
My Jewish Ex-Girlfriend
She troubles me because of the way I want her so. In fact, right now as I write this I realize how distant she is from me and yet how persistent is my desire.
Let me explain this situation, just a little. Our first encounter was during the loneliest of all summers. 2003. I was sleeping with another ex-girlfriend after having been dumped by the woman I loved, at the height of the most serious depression I'd ever experienced. She was a diminutive Puerto Rican/Korean girl who loved to fuck. Had a kid in fact. That's an episode. And so naturally after being dumped by, let's say her name is K, I to to L for attention. My ego had been destroyed. I had lost all confidence in myself, such that, I knew no real purpose to life. I took to reading Murakami and watching "Mishima" that summer--those were formative experiences. At any rate, one night with L, I met R.
Our pathes didn't really cross again until sometime just before or after I got out of the hospital. It was only a week trip. And mind not the nonchalance--the occasion for recognition just hasn't struck. In another mood, I can say more with a tone befitting. But now, I am all of wasted desire, misdirected. We started spending time together. She was very hesitant at first, and then things seemed to happen. We started spending all of our time together. And, despite my condition, melancholia with a dose of mania, I fell in love with her.
I say despite and not because of. Perhaps it is because of this moment of wounded love--her not agreeing to come and bed me tonight--or lust, but I say otherwise. I cannot say about now and the motivations behind this desire, but I can say about then. And it was so clear to me how much I needed her. I recall in particular, as we drove to visit my parents, how we stopped and she gave me a christmas present: a book on Anselm Kiefer. I was so happy. Delighted in fact. It was such a wonderful gift. And I keep it on top of my dictionaries, unread.
But I did love her. And so. Otherwise, why would I have put up with the terror that we shared together. Twice the police were called. Once by me. This was more than a year later. Definitions of love notwithstanding. Despite all this, I am tempted to sing her praises here. And perhaps partially because I almost gave her the address of this site--something I've passed on to no one. But she knows everything. There is nothing I have to hide with her. She knows all of the truth.
last week, when i started this post, she sent me an email, trying to remind me of her sexual dominance over me. telling me how she'd gone down on a man she just met. so i spend hours on the phone trying to get her to come join me for the night, promising the same. these negotiations were fruitless, and then exasperated, i sent her this:
I'm still sitting here wondering why this happens. I've wasted most of a night thinking about you. Which is not to say in any way that you are a waste of my time. Clearly I don't think so (although I did have other things to do tonight). And I don't know why I feel so rotten. I was just in the bathroom and I look in the mirror and I think about the way you might see me and I feel attractive, even sexy, and I haven't felt that way in a long time. And I want that again.
Because it's not that way with ----. I mean, there are moments of sexual desire, clearly, but it has nothing to do with those emotions I feel when I think about sleeping with you. And so it's not merely lust. Some desire to have you sucking on my cock rather than some anonymous stranger. Rather, it's about how I felt about msyelf when I was in bed with you, or with you in general. Even at the cafe, I think, that one afternoon this summer. I felt all fo the sudden like I was someone, because I was with you and because I knew you were drawn to me.
Perhaps this is too what you like from me, although you're strong enough not to give into these feelings? It's just that, when I'm with ----, I never need to feel sexy. Ever. I mean, there are times when I feel like I look better than others, but in general, all of that internal confidence which comes over me when I'm with you, when there's a chance soemthing could happen, all of that is absent. Perhaps these are feelings we are better without. But I don't know . I can't convince myself of that. I want to feel that way again. I mean, when I was with you, I forgot about everything. Everything seemed put into a place where it was manageable.
This will sound weird, but you really made me feel like I was a man. Like I was with a woman that I could be proud of. Come talk to this hot sexy bitch that is all mine. That is in love with me ... and that's what it comes down to. That with ----, I don't feel like I have a trophy. I mean, she's really great, really. But a lot of the things that make her great, are not visible.
With you, everything that your body is, your vicious smile and your scent, all of that is in turn backed up by this complex person who is fascinating, enlightening. I suppose that was part of the mystery. Why would you have ever wanted someone like me?
I felt like I had cheated the world. Fooled them. Does any of this make sense?
moi
Matchpoint
Tonight I was watching this film, but only part. In fact, it troubles me too much to watch the entire thing. I'd seen it before and knew where all was going. A sense I did not possess upon first viewing.
The film bears too many resonances for comfort. Confusion between love and lust--the dimensions of love. Infidelity. Inability to take responsibility for one's actions. The most loathsome inclination towards material comforts. And the blackest, most abysmal guilt.
The only feeling familiar to me presently, is the force of material comforts. But I have been driven away from the doubts that plagued me so, for nearly a month or longer. And even I cannot admit to the material comforts that Chris, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, enjoys. But my life is very plain, and so even modest comforts mean something to me. I'm happy simply to enjoy wealth or to be with those who do,
rather than to have it to myself. I live from paycheck to paycheck, and I suspect I always will.
Chris' guilt afflicts him prior to the murder he commits (and afterwards, for a while). And that's the only guilt I know. I've dreamt of murder--in fact quite frequently--but its purpose is to saddle me with something I can never overcome. Hence how I recoil from the climax of the film. And Chris takes on a double murder. Not merely the murder of a woman that he loves, on some level, but also of a child that is his.
It would be well to dismiss the confusion he has in love as an ethical lapse. Akrasia. Knowing and desiring the good but without pursuing it. Yet the good is
too complicated by all of the forces which compose it. Of course, explanations are made in this way to legitimate failure (as much as they are made to justify judgment).
Chris is frustrated by the double life he chooses and the decision it ultimately forces him to make. Voltaire is said to write somewhere that indecision inevitable decides itself. This blog presents a similar anxiety for me. I'd taken pleasure, in its conception, in the notion of regaling my readers with the more sinister exploits. But in writing a first post on adultery, or rather infidelity, I found myself struck by how evil the enterprise was and the effects this form of catharsis might produce. And thus silenced, for several days (not to mention all of the occupations interceding). With reflection on this film I find a potential middle way, where I restrain the glory I feel in recounting the stories, and focus on the emotional affects most concerning me.
You see, in fact, I am not Sade. I suppose that is laughable. Transgression by
itself provides me with no pleasure. Or at least, not principally. Yet I am a sadist in the desire to flaunt power. Glory in infidelity has no greater function than to pacify the insecurities of the ego, of the man who never thought himself enough to draw a woman to him--such that he would never be convinced those he did draw were good enough. I know that's not true, but I am having a hard time convincing the desiring part. As we know, everything depends upon the maintenance of desire. Notions of will are for self-haters. My quondam Christianity makes me a self-hater, but only as a result of this tradition that we all share.
Friday, November 2, 2007
A is for Adultery
Ha.
The first time: I was then involved in what would come to be one of my longer term relationships. It lasted two and a half years. I cannot recall how long we'd been together at that point. I was 18. Gone to a wedding, where after drinks later that night I started kissing a girl that I'd known for some time, who was not my girlfriend. Was not even truly adultery, nor even a more significant form of infidelity. But I suppose the latter is just going to get us into moot distinctions.
The story gets funny: the next day I sat in front of the place where my girlfriend worked (a Baskin Robbins), unable to approach the business, but advertising my guilt for her.
The last time: one month ago. Been in a relationship since New Year's. Cheated on her half a dozen times. Last time, with a girl who'd been the closest friend of two of my exes (neither of them know about it) and who'd dated two of my closer male friends (neither of which knows about it). So we have, in all, about five potentially disgruntled parties. I started sleeping with this woman about two years ago. Nothing would ever come of it, both of us knew, because our mutual friends, none of which would have been happy about us seeing each other.
For weeks I worried she would become pregnant. And I tortured myself over what I'd done to my girlfriend.
I am convinced that on some level, I have done this act for the guilt. That I needed this guilt. It had nothing to do with the immediate pleasure this woman's body offered. Rather, it was about the pain I could inflict upon myself afterwards.
The Origins of this Blog
I was unsatisfied with the other blog I have, in which I pontificate, largely amongst friends, on sometimes funny things and sometimes poetic things and sometimes thoughtful things. But the stress of that was still too much. Because there is too much that I just feel uncomfortable saying in front of them. I wanted an audience there, of peers. Here, I don't want an audience of peers. Or perhaps ideally. But there is too much that I have to say that I can't say with them.
And I have so many sins which I need to speak about, because the persistent psychotherapy is not enough. Nor are the medications. My libido still pressures me. And I have a certain a desire for exhibitionism.
I want to be honest although I know my desire for honesty is perverse.
I struggle with not knowing myself.